Jayhawker Soule

That would be an improvement. The statement would then become simply wrong, rather than absurdly wrong.

Ojuice5001

Thanks, I guess. You know, your debating style is very similar to my brother's.

Jayhawker Soule

Your assumption is simply wrong. The process was not from naturalism to supernaturalism, but from awareness to superstition and supernaturalism to naturalism.

Goliath

Ojuice,

Thank you for correcting your argument to compensate for the incorrect use of the term "metaphysical naturalist."

However, your argument still fails in that you seem to be assuming that supernatural belief and metaphysical naturalism form a partition of the set of all people. This is most evident when you say that "There was a time when new knowledge and supernaturalism increased together, and new knowledge was the foe of naturalism." Why would an increase of knowledge along with an increased belief in the supernatural necessarily mean a decrease in metaphysical naturalism? What if the number of people who hold no belief in the supernatural merely declined to make up for the larger number of supernaturalists?

It would seem that you've been brought right back to the drawing board, as it were.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Jayhawker Soule

That may well be a function of what he has to debate against.

Jayhawker Soule

So there they were, passing time in their cozy cave in Altamira, Spain. One-Grunt-Low-Growl was watching his mate, Two-Grunt, paint this Bison on the wall.

"That's really good work. Nice proportions." remarked One-Grunt-Low-Growl.

"Thanks", muttered Two-Grunt, somewhat more focussed on her work than her mate.

"I wonder", continued One-Grunt, "what possible purpose there could be in making such a big animal."

"Damned if I know", responded his mate, totally pissed at his constant chattering, "But I'll tell you one thing, the reason has absolutely nothing to do with some teleological world view and can be fully explained by natural causes."

One-Grunt-Low-Growl looked dully at his mate, not having a clue what she was saying, but assuming that it had something to do with breathing in those red-ochre fumes. It was then that the idea struck him: "No, no, no! It was God - a Supernatural Diety responsible for creating both bisons and purpose. I just know it was."

Two-grunt just continued painting ...

[ December 19, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

emotional

The framework for this theorising is that of naturalistic evolution. The evolutionary development of the brain had to do with this. Explanation:

The newly-branched (from ape-like ancestors) hominid was concerned about survival (food, drink and sex) alone, like all other animals. Brain evolution brought awareness: looking at a flowing river and thinking about what it meant.

Looking at a flowing river brought animism: the river is a living soul running forth. So if there is a need for crop inundation, the river can be pleaded with to inundate the fields.

Further philosophising brought polytheism: the independent river was replaced by a puppet-on-string river, where the controller is the River God. For crop inundation, the River God is pleaded with.

Yet more philosophising brought monotheism: for economy of liturgy, a process of unification of gods ensued, until only one Universal God was left to plead with.

The last stage, our present stage, is naturalism: the river is once again a free-flowing agent, albeit not with a soul and cannot be pleaded with. This present stage was brought by a variety of factors, including scientific research and further philosophy.

The chief advantage that naturalism holds over previous worldviews is that it is the truth. It carries the most power of explanation and makes most sense, and all experience is in line with it. The New Theology, which no longer has to devise epicycles of theodicy or external agencies in order to thrive, has been framed by Richard Dawkins thus:

Ojuice5001

You're talking about naturalism? That's exactly what I think about polytheism. Polytheism makes events intelligible as the will of the gods. And most polytheists have ideas of specific pantheon, which can be expected to cause the events that we see. Naturalism and monotheism both posit a reality that could account for any empirical facts that we see; whenever new knowledge about nature (e.g., the Big Bang) is discovered, the naturalist changes his view of ultimate reality and the monotheist explains the discrepancy away. Polytheists doesn't have to do either to their view of ultimate reality, because it was fine to begin with.

Jayhawker Soule

"It's the will of the Gods" makes absolutely nothing "intelligible" unless, of course, 'intelligible' has become part of your lexicon of words paid extra to make sense of the senseless.

[ December 20, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Ojuice5001

Polytheism does make things more intelligible. Take the ocean, which (according to Roman polytheism) is ruled by Neptune. In naturalism, the ocean is nothing but a very large body of salty water. It has no identity. But postulating Neptune allows us to talk about the ocean as the changeless, power-filled, foreign-to-humanity place that it is.